\n French authorities have detained seven people in an investigation into the kidnapping of a young Swiss citizen believed to be the latest abduction targeting the hugely lucrative cryptocurrency world, a source close to the case said.\n <\/p>\n
The man, aged 20 according to Swiss media reports, was freed on Sunday in the south-eastern French city of Valence in a special operation by gendarmes, said the source, who asked not to be named.<\/p>\n
No details were given regarding how long he had been held. Some 150 gendarmes were mobilised in the operation to free him.<\/p>\n
According to regional daily Dauphine Libere, the young man was found tied up in a house near the Valence high-speed train station.<\/p>\n
French authorities have been dealing with a string of kidnappings and extortion attempts targeting the families of high-worth individuals dealing in cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n
In January, kidnappers seized French crypto boss David Balland and his partner. Balland co-founded the crypto firm Ledger, valued at the time at more than $1billion.<\/p>\n
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Balland\u2019s kidnappers cut off his finger and demanded a hefty ransom. He was freed the next day, and his girlfriend was found tied up in the boot of a car outside Paris.<\/p>\n
In May, the father of a man who ran a Malta-based cryptocurrency company was kidnapped by four hooded men in Paris. The victim, whose finger was severed by the kidnappers and for whom a ransom of several million euros was demanded, was released 58 hours later during a raid by the security forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French authorities have detained seven people in an investigation into the kidnapping of a young Swiss citizen believed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-399466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115150671304279444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}